Described by Yehudi Menuhin as a "master of intricate patterns and forms" Adrian Williams was born in Hertfordshire and showed precocious talent at the piano as a young child.

He began composing at the age of eleven, his early promise resulting in consultations with Lennox Berkeley followed by composition and piano studies at the Royal College of Music where his teachers included Bernard Stevens, Alan Ridout and John Lill.

During his RCM studies Williams received recognition for his first mature orchestral work, the gritty and ambitious Symphonic Studies, an achievement acknowledged by the RCM director Sir David Willcocks who conducted the work with the RCM orchestra. His final year at the College were marked by two accolades, a Leverhulme scholarship and the coveted Menuhin Prize for Composition.

The years that followed saw a period as Composer in Residence at Charterhouse School during which his music underwent a stylistic reassessment. The outcome was a tougher harmonic language that although more adventurous in its range and scope, retained an underlying melodic vein that has always remained central to his music. Several important works were to emerge from this period including the Second String Quartet, a remarkable uninterrupted span of thirty eight minutes and the intricately orchestrated symphonic poem Tess.

During the eighties a move to the Welsh Borders saw Williams find his spiritual home, along with the peace of mind and creative impetus for many of his most vital works. Amongst them is the piece spawned by his winning the Guinness Prize for Composition, the cantata after Louis MacNeice Not Yet Born, Images of a Mind for cello and piano, the Cantata after Alun Lewis The Ways of Going and Dies Irae, the latter a BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra commission that in its power of expression, recalls the Sinfonia da Requiem of Britten, a composer that remains one of Williams' most significant influences.

It was during his early years in the Welsh borders that Williams became the founding light of the Presteigne Festival, an enterprising event that continues to thrive and maintains a strong commitment to contemporary music.

The multi-faceted, even eclectic nature of Adrian Williams' music has also seen him forge a successful career in music for film and television, a field he continues to be active in, whilst his absorption of influences as diverse as English song and elements of jazz and minimalism has seen his catalogue of major works grow to demonstrate a richly compelling creative voice.

Ever searching for new creative horizons, Williams' recent scores, including Maelienydd (2008) for Chamber Orchestra and the String Quartet no 4, premiered to acclaim at the 2009 Presteigne Festival, exhibit a deeply felt emotional core, conjuring with the atmosphere and wild, open spaces of the composer's Welsh Borderland surroundings with a renewed sense of wonder and mystery.

The Cello Concerto (2009) marks the culmination of Adrian Williams' long standing relationship with Raphael Wallfisch, an ardent champion of the composer's works for cello who also gave the first performance of his Spring Requiem in 1993.

Adrian Williams graduated from University College Hospital, London and, after training in General Medicine there, took up a lectureship at The Cardiothoracic Institute, Brompton Hospital, investigating the pulmonary changes associated with chronic liver disease.

In 1975 he took tenure at Harvard Medical School where his interest in sleep began with the investigation of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (S.I.D.S). Here he published a definitive study implicating Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) as a cause of the syndrome.

An invitation to U.C.L.A. in 1977 to take up a post as Chest Physician allowed this early interest in OSA to develop resulting in the publication of one of the very first reports of OSA causing hypertension and of oximetry as a natural diagnostic tool.

In 1985 Dr Williams became tenured Professor of Medicine at U.C.L.A. and Co-Director of U.C.L.A’s Sleep Laboratory. As Sleep Medicine gelled as a specialty, Dr Williams became an accredited polysomnographer and later a Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

In 1994, he returned to the UK taking up the directorship of the Sleep Disorders Centre at St Thomas’s Hospital. Here he developed one of the UK’s only comprehensive sleep services with continued interest in Sleep Disordered Breathing and its treatment.

Dr Williams is a Diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, a founding member of The British Sleep Foundation, the Sleep Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and the R.L.S. UK Group. Dr Williams has published extensively on Sleep Disorders including more than 60 peer reviewed original scientific papers and more than 30 other published papers including chapters and books. In 2010, he became the first substantive Chair in Sleep Medicine in the UK.